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TEE YOUNG SURVEYORS. 



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OF 

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OF 

..:The Young Surveyors:.. 

GBORGE WASHINGTON ~sT7~ 

AND 

GEORGB WII^IvI AM KAIRFAX 

TO SURVEY THF VIRGINIA I^ANDS OF 

Thomas, Sixth Lord Fairfax, 



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BY 






Copiously Illustrated by Miss Eugenie De Land. 



SXRICXl^Y AUTHE^NXIC. 

FIRST EDITION. :• , > 



ALEXANDRIA, VA. 

PRINTED BY G. H. RAMEY & SON. 

1902. 



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SFf-. r? 1902 

Cffl»/BIOHT ITNTRV 

Oi..AJ?3 «- XXo Mo 
CO^Y 3. 





Copyright, 1902, 

BY 

William H. Snowden. 




THE STORY OF THE YOUNG SURVEYORS IS STRICTLY AUTHENTIC IT WILL BE 

FOLLOWED BY THE STORY OF THE VOYAGERS GEORGE WASHINGTON 

AND HIS HALF BROTHER LAWRENCE WASHINGTON IN 1751-2. 









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"And he dragged the mountains over with chain and rod — 
The blue sky was his cover, the Indian his lover, 
And his duty was his sovereign and God." 

One spring morning, early in the month of March, 1747, eight years before the 
French and Indian war, two young men might have been seen standing at the gates 
of "Old Bel voir" the elegant home of the Hon. Wm. Fairfax on the Virginia shore of 
the Potomac river, two miles below Mount Vernon, which latter place was then the 
residence of Major Lawrence Washington, son of Augustine, and half brother of 
George Washington of ever honored memory, not yet sixteen years of age, though 
already nearly of manly stature and possessing much of manly bearing and dignity. 
The other was George. William Fairfax, son of the Belvoir proprietor, and older by 
eight years than his companion. The former after having completed his school 
education under the limited tuition of school masters, Hobby and Williams in the 
county of VV^estmoreland, Virginia, had come up from the lowlands a short time pre- 
viously to make his home temporarily with his brother Lawrence until he could 
find some employment suited to the drift of his natural inclinations. It was here 
that the two Georges had first met and commenced an acquaintance which was 
very soon to ripen into confidential friendship, and ultimately, into a brotherly 
attachment and affection which no circumstances of their after lives were sufficient 
to mar or change. 

The inclinations of both these young men were much the same. Integrity of pur- 
pose and action was the basis of both their natures and characters. Both were 
quick of perception, ardent and eager in their purpose, and anxious to supplement 
/^their school rudiments with wide and varied experiences in the greater and more 
thorough school of the world. Both were fond of adventure which at that early 



71 



4 THE STORY OF THE YOUNG SURVEYORS. 

time in the history of the colony was everywhere opening hefore them. They were 
both physical!}' sturdy and capable of great endurance and hardshi])s. They had 
been receiving of late more advanced instruction together in the art and mystery 
of trigonometry or land surveying, botli theoretical and practical, from Lawrence 
Washington who had received a thorough course of education in old England; for 
the most promising field of employment then oi)ening for a young man of energy 
and talent was the "laying off" of plantations in the wilderness territory of the ])Vo\- 
ince. And now, they were about to start together on an expedition over the Bkn; 
Ridge mountains to the valley of the Shenandoah river, almost a terra incognita 
and the home of wild beasts and prowling Indians. 

Their way was to lead them through the primitive forests and jungles — a way 
which the bison, the deer and the bear had first marked out, long centuries before 
between the mountains and the sea, and which the roving red man as well, had 
long threaded. In all the region thi'ough which they were to pass, plain wagon 
roads or highways were then unknown and only at long intervals was there to be 
seen a human habitaiion or other sign of civilized life. For guidance in their 
course they had only their compass and the blazings of the axe on the great tree 
trunks, made bv the earliest pioneers after the coming of Cai)tain John Smith in 
1608. 








YOUNG SURVEYOIIS STARTING ON THEIR EXPEDITION FROM BELVOIR. 



Thomas Fairfax, sixth Lord and Baron of Cameron, and cousin (if General Fair- 
fax of (Jrom well's })arlinientary army, born in England in IGUl had inherited his 
mother Catherine's extensive landed estate known in history and geography as the 
Korthern Neck of Virginia lying between the Potomac and Ivapj)ahannock rivers 



THE STORY OF THE YOUNG SURVEYORS. 5 

and their tributnries comprising? in its vast area the counties of Northumberland, 
Lancaster, Richmond, Westmoreland, King George, Prince William, Stafford, 
Fairfax, Loudoun, Fauquier, Culpeper, Madison, Page, Shenandoah, Hardy, Hamp- 
shire, Morgan, Berkeley, Jefferson, Frederick and Clark. 

His possessions in this valley had never been regularly settled nor surveyed. 
Lawless intruders, squatters as they were called were seating themselves along the 
finest streams and in the richest valleys and virtually taking possession of the 
whole countr3\ It was the anxious desire of Lord Fairfiix to have these lands ex- 
amined, surveyed, and portioned out into lots or parcels, preparatory to ejecting 
the interlopers or bringing them to satisfactory usage. 

He had come over to Virginia in 1745, and since, had been passing most of his 
time with his cousin William at Belvoir, who had some time previously opened a 
land office for the sale of his lands to the incoming settlers. Here he made the 
acquaintance of the two young men already described, by whose abilities and char- 
acteristics he was so favorably impressed that he employed them as his surveyors. 




WAY OF THE SURVEYORS THROUGH THE WILDERNESS. 



For George William he obtained a commission from the provincial legislature 
of Virginia, and Washington was chosen to accompany and assist him in the pro- 
spective work. The compensation of each was to be a doubloon, or a little over 
fifteen dollars a day. They were both delighted by his Lordship's proposition and 



6 



THE STORY OF THE YOUNG SURVEYORS. 



libf;ral offer of remuneration and had made their arrangments for the expedition 
with alacrity. 

Our youno; adventurers seemed not to have shared in a popular superstition ; 
for the day they chose for starting was Friday, March eleventh, and it does not 
appear from the journal of tlieir exploits that any very ill luck befell them through- 
out their perilous undertaking. Circumstances seemed propitious for them from 
the start. The winter had past and gone. Its last lingering snow drifts were fast 
disappearing from all the hill sides and valleys. Spring time was again bringing 
the possibilities of bud and leaf and blossom to the glad earth around them and 
to their young and impulsive natures it brought hopes and expectations which 
elated them and gave them the incentive and persevering forces they needed and 
found. 

As they cantered briskly away from the "Belvoir Home" down the plantation 
road leading to the King's Highway from Williamsburg to Alexandria, doubtless 
their only presages were of good fortune and success. Ten miles on their way thev 
halted at Great Hunting Creek to exchange courtesies with their friends the Wests, 
the Alexanders and the Carlyles who were then busy laying the foundations of the 
new settlement of "Belle Haven" afterwards Alexandria town. From Belle Haven 
they struck the old Indian trail running through Cameron Manor in a direction 
nearly identical with that of the present Little River turnpike of Fairfax and 
Loudoun counties, the same trail followed by Washington six years after, when sent 
b}^ Governor Dinwiddle on an expedition to expostulate with the French command- 
er near Lake Erie for his aggressions on the territory of the King of Great Britain — 




NEVILLE S HOSTELRY WHERE THE SURVEYORS LODGED. 



the one he followed a year after on his expedition in which occurred tlie ca])it- 
ulation of Fort Mecessity; and the one over whicli marched in 1755 a ])ortion of the 
army of General Edward Bruddock against the French and Indians. 

At nightfall on the first day of their journey bad as the roads or paths must have 
been at that time of the year,' and full (lowing as were all of the intervening streams 
from the snows and winter rains, the surveyors had made over forty miles of their 
journey, which brought them to the head waters of Bull Run, a stream flowing 
into the Occoquan river and which a hundred years after was to become so famous 
for its ccjntlicts of the civil war. Here they found generous hosi)itality in the 



THE STORY OF THE YOUNG SURVEYORS. 7 

back-woocls-manst3^1e, arid a good night's rest under the cabin root" of "Squire Ne- 
ville", a cousin of the Fairfaxes and well known to them both, who had come up 
to the isolated locality near twenty years before from his first place of settlement 
in the western part of Prince William county, anc], selected a large tract of land 
lying on the main traveled way by Ashby's Gap fi?6m Fredericksburg on the Rap- 
pahannock to the straggling trading post of \Vin9l1ester. His house or cabin was 
an "ordinary" or inn and also served as a storehouse for general merchandise and 
provisions to accommodate all incoming pioneers, settlers and wayfarers. 

Washington does not tell us in his diary what comprised their bill of fare on 
the table of this wilderness hostlery after their fatiguing joi^rney, but we may im- 
agine and perhaps very correctly, that smoking venison and other wild game was 
set before them. This ordinary was not far from the village of Aldie in Loudoun 
county. It was a low, long rambling building of stone and was kept up as a wagon 
stand for several generations after that time. For many years it was known as 
Lacy's ordinary. 

The main part of this ancient structure is still standing as it has been for more 
than a hundred and fifty years on the old Braddock road, near where the old Caro- 
lina road crosses, it and about one mile from the Little River Turnpike leading up 
from Alexandria to Aldie and which from that village extends to the Shenandoah 
20 miles distant passing through Ashby's Gap. The Carolina road comes up 
through Haymarket and extends to Leesburg and beyond. 

When the house was built is not now known as it has no date but doubtless it 
goes back to the time before the counties of Prince William, Fairfax and Loudoun 
were established from old Stafford. Its length is 60 feet, its width 40 feet. It 
has 8 rooms on the ground floor and an attic. The fire places are 8 feet wide and 
the stone chimneys are massive. As may be seen by the picture a metallic roof 
has replaced the old one of riven shingles. This detracts much from the primitive 
appearance of the old hostlery as the old roof was set with a row of quaint dormer 
windows. The interior arrangements of the building remain much the same as 
when the young surveyors were sheltered there. The great outside kitchen in 
which so many bountiful repasts were served up through the long vanished years 
to regale the hungry wayfarers, imigrants, traders, surveyors, hunters and wagon- 
ers, has fallen and only the stones of the wide chimney and capacious fire place 
and oven remain. 

Often after this expedition of 1747, before his name and fame had gone to the 
utmost parts of the earth, Washington was entertained in the same ordinary as he 
made journeys to the Shenandoah Valley to look after the lands he had there pat- 
ented. Many other noted historical personages in the colonial days were guests 
in the lowlv inn, among them Daniel Boone and his hardy companions on their 
way up the old Carolina road from the Sand Hills of Carolina to their remote pos- 
sessions in the wilds of Kentucky. Louis Phillip, King of France and his two 
brothers the Duke de Montpensier, and the Count de Boujealais were guests there. 
Volney tarried there; Lord Fairfax in his hunting excursions often crossed its 
threshold, and Nellie Castis Lewis always made it her midway stopping place in 
her later years after removuig from Woodlawn to the valley. 

Near by is a family burying ground where many of the early residents of the 
neighborhood lie buried. 

While scores oMhe old tavern stands which once dotted the highways leading, 
down from the Shenandoah valley and under whose roofs the army of hardy wag- 
oners found entertainment for "man and beast" in the years before the coming of 
railways, have ceased to be, and are now forgotten, this historic tenement still stands 
and is occupied, and with care may yet remain a landmark for another generation. 

Our surveyors on the following morning resumed their journey and crossed the 
Blue Ridge through Ashby's Gap swimming the yhenandoah and then were in the 



THE STORY OF THE YOUNG SURVEYORS. 




SWIMMING THE SHKNANDOAH. 

great valley of Virginia where it is about 25 miles wide, a region diversified by gentle 
swells and slopes, watered by plentiful springs and streams, and admirably adapted 
to cultivation. The Blue Ridge bounds it on one side, the North Mountain, a ridge 
of the Alleghanies on the other ; while through it flows that bright and abounding 
river which on account of its surpassing beauty was named by the Indians "'Shen- 
andoah", that is to say the "daughter of the stars". Pushing on their way, they 
found rest again at nightfall under the roof of Captain Ashby on the river just 
named, a short distance above Burwell's Island at the "great bend" of that stream. 
This was another station for the i'errying and entertainment of wayfarers and the 
selling of supplies to traders and squatters. On Sunday, March the thirteenth, 




^-%m 



IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHENANDOAH, 



THF STORY OF THE YOUNG SURVEYORS. 



9 



they rode to his Lordship's "quarters" four miles higher up the river, passing 
through beautiful groves of sugar maples and fertile bottom lands. They had 
reached a veritable wilderness, such as the}'' had never beheld in all the Potomac 
or Rappahannock regions. Every object around them was bewildering to their 
minds we may imagine, and awe inspiring. Remnants of the old Indian tribes 
still roaiTied tlie vast hunting grounds, alive with wild game, to the dismay of the 
defenceless traveler and pioneer, for be it remembered, the time was eight years 
before the French and Indian war in which General Braddock figured so inglorious- 
ly, losing the battle on the Monongahela and his own life. 






X 




ARRIVAL AT LORD FAIRFAX'S QUARTERS. 



Lord Fairfax had come to tlie valley a year or so before and had built for him- 
self about twelve miles south east of Winchester a stone "Hunting Lodge" of ample 
])roportions with quarters lor servants, in the centre of a m.anorial estate often thou- 
sand acres, on which he liad designed to build at sometime, a palatial residence. 
He had called his new home "Greenway Court", where he lived a recluse 
with his attendants, and scores of hoaads, but the latch string always hung 
outside of his door, and this was always open wide for the entertainment of the way- 
farer. Heestablislied here a branch of the Belvoir land office and became popular 
with all classes around him and was very useful and influential in the organization 
of the county of Fredericksburg, and in building up the town of Wincliester. 

Young Washington and his friend found under the roof of Greenway Court wel- 
come and good cheer, and while they were engaged in surve3ang and mapping the 
surrounding lands the place was to be their home. 

Henceforth for a time our adventurers were to be surrounded by perils and dan- 
gers as well as by sights novel and interesting, but their new field of action was to 



10 



THE STORY OF THE YOUNG SURVEYORS. 



o-ive them valualile experiences, and for one of them it was to lay the foundation 
of great usefuhiess to himself, to his country and to mankind the world over. 

Washington during this expedition kept a diary not only of all surveys of the 
tracts and lots made,but also of many curious and interesting circumstances incident 
to the wild, romantic life which iheir business required. From this diary we make 
the Ibllowing extracts, which will give to the reader some idea of the daily lifeof 
the two Georges as they penetrated the primeval forests of the great valley and with 
compass and chain established the "buttings and boundings" of those wide areas 
over which are now to be found so many of the fertile valley farms. 




CABIN OF LORD FAIRFAX. 



The surveys were commenced in the lower part of the valley, some distance above 
the junction of the Shenandoah with the Potomac, and extended for many miles 
along the former stream. 

Here and there only partial clearings had been made by adventurous squatters and 
pioneers, but even their rude tillage of the virgin soil had })roduced good crops 
of grains, hemp, and tobacco. The extracts arejust as Washington hurriedly noted 
ihem down from day to day in his field book, and if his modes of expression and or- 
thography at that time are not up to the standard of the present day we feel sure 
that no sensible student will indulge in unkind criticism of them, as evidently they 
were not intended for the public eye. They are some what quaint in style, but 
thev give us fond glimjjses ofrthe great personage in his boyhood and make us 
for the time companions with him as he roughs it in the Virginia wilds. 

Tuesday, March 15th. We set out early, with intent to run round ye s\l land, but being taken in a 
rain, and it increasing very fast obliged us to return. It dealing about I. o'clock and our time being too 
precious to lose, we a second time ventured out and worked hard till night, and then returned to Pen- 
nington. We gotmir suppeis and was lighted into a room, and I not being so good a woodsman as ye 
rest of my company siripped myself very orderly and went into ye bed as they called it, wh< n to my surprise 
I found it to be nothing but a little straw, mitted together without sheets or anything el-^e, but only one 
threadbare blanket, witii double its weight of vermen.sucli as lice, fleas &c. I was glad to get up; as soon 
as the Itgiit was carried from us I put on my clothes and lay as my companions. Ilad we not have been 



THE STORY OF THE YOUNG SURVEYORS. 



roru/ 



very tired I am sure we should not have sleepe'd much that night. I made a promise not to sleep so froru, 
that time forward, chusing rather to sleep in ye open air before a fire as will appear hereafter". 

March ye 15th. Surveyed a tract of land on Gate's marsh. Ye chain men were Henry Ashby and 
Richard Taylor. Ye marker Robert Ashby. Ye pilot Wm. Lindsy. 

March the l6th. we set out early and finished about one o'clock and then travell'd to Fredericks- 
town now Winchester where our baggage came to us. We cleaned ourselves to get rid of ye game we had 
catched night before, and took a review of ye town, and thence returned to our lodgings where we had 
a good dinner prepared for us, wuie and rum punch in plenty, and a good leather bed with clean sheets which 
was a very aggreeable regale. 




RUNNING LINES, 



March 17th. Rained till ten o'clock, and then clearing up, we reached as far as Major Campbell's, one 
of the Burgesses, about 25 miles from town. Nothing remarkable this day nor night, but that we had a 
tolerable good bed to lie on. 

March l8th. We travelled up about 35 miles to Thomas Barwick's on Potomac where we found ye river 
so exceedingly high by reason of ye great rains that had fallen up about ye Allegany Mountains as they told 
us, which was then bringinsj down ye melted snow, and that it would not be fordable for several days; it 
was then six foot higher than usual and was rising, we agreed to stay till Monday — We this day called 
to see ye famed warm springs, we camped out in ye field (his night. Nothing remarkable happened till ye 
2oth. When finding ye river much abated in ye evening swam our horses over and carried them to Charles 
Polk's in Maryland for pasturage till ye next morning. 

^Iarch 2 1 St. Travell'd up ye Maryland side in a continued rain all ye day to Col Cresaps, right agains 
ye north branch, I believe ye worst roads ever travell'd by man or beast^ 



12 



THE STORY OF THE YOU^"G SURVEYORS. 




TAKING A NAP. 



March 22. Continued rain and ye freshet kept us at Cresaps. 

March 23. Rained till about 2.oclock when we were surprised by thirty odd Indians coming from war 
with a scalp. We had some liquor with us ot which we gavelhem part, it elevating their spirits, put them in 
a humor for dancing, of whom we had a war djtnce. Their manner of dancing is as follows: They clear 
a large circle and make a hre in ye miiidle, then seat themselves around it, ye speaker making a great speech 
telling them in what manner they are to dance. After he has finished, the best dancer jumps up as one 
awakened out of a sleep and runs and jumps about ye ring in a most cornicle manner. He is followed by 
ye rest, then begins their musicians to Jjlay. Ye music isa pot half of water with a deerskin str^'tch'd over 
it as tight as it can and a gourd, with some shot in it to rattle, and a piece of a horse's tail tied to it to 
make it look fine. Ye one keeps rattling and ye other drumming all ye while ye others is dancing. 

March 25ih, 1748. Went up to ye mouth of Patterson's creek and swam our horses over; got over 
ourselves in a canoe and travell'd up the following part of ye day to Abram Johnstone's 15 miles from where 
we camped. 

March 26. Travell'd up ye creek to Solomon Hedges, esq., one of his majestie's justices of the pence for 
the county of Frederick, where wecamjied. When we came to supper there was neither a cloth upon ye 
table nor a knife to eat with, but as good luck would have it we had knives of our own." 

March 29. Went out this morning and surveyed 500 acres of land and went down to one iMichael 
Stump's on ye south fork of ye branch; on our way shot two wild turkeys. 

April 2nd. Last night was a blowing, rainy night. Our straw calch'd fire y't we was laying upon 
and was luckily preserved by one of our men's awaking. 



THE STORY Otf THF YOUNG SURVEYORS. 



13 



April 3d. Last night was a much more blustering night than ye former; we had our tent quite carried 
off with ye wind, and was obliged to lie ye latter part of ye night without covering. 

April 6th. Last night was so intolerable smoky that we were obliged all hands to leave ye tent to ye 
mercy of ye wind and fire. This day on our journey was catch'd in a very heavy rain. We got under a 
straw house until ye worst of it was over and then continued our journey. 

April 7. Rained successively all last night. This morning one of our party killed a wild turkie that 
weighed 20 pounds. Slept in Cassey's house which was the first night I had slept in a house since I came 
to ye branch. 

April Sth. We camped this night in a wood near a wild meadow where was a large stack of hay. 







SWIMMING THE POTOMAC. 



After we had pitched our tent wc made a very large fire. We pulled out our knapsacks in order to re- 
cruit ourselves. Every one was his own cook, our spits were forked sticks; our plates were l.irge chips. 
As for dishes we had none. 

April loth. We took our farewell of ye branch and travelled over hills and mountains to Coddy'son 
Great Cacapefaon about 40 miles. 

April nth. We travdled from Coddy's down to Frederick Town where we reached about 12 o'clock. 
We dined in town and then went to Ciptain Hite's and lodged. 

April 12th. Clot over Wms. Gap and as low as Wni. West's in Fairfa.x county, iS miles from ye top of 
ye ridge. 

They were now on the home stretch and on the 13th reached their homes of Belvoir 
and Mount Vernon after an absence of thirteen months. 

The foregoing extracts are onl}' such portions of Washington's journal as serve to 
acquaint us with a few of the hardships and perils which beset the young surveyors 
in their romantic work in the Virginia wilderness a hundred and fifty years ago. 

While on this expedition Washington wrote to a friend the following letter : 

Dear Richard : The receipt of your kind favor of the 2nd. of this instant afforded me unspeakable pleasure 
as I am convinced I am still in the memory of ><o worthy a friend, a friendship I shall ever be proud of 
increasing. You gave me the morepleasure as I received your letter amongst a parcel of bari)arians and an 
uncouth set of people. The like favor often repeated would give me pleasure aUho I seem to be in a place 



14 



THE STORY OF THE YOUNG SURVEYORS. 



where no real satisfaction is to be had. Since you received my letter in October I have not sleeped above 
three nights or four in a bed, but after walking a good deal all the day lay down bcf(jre the fire upon a little 
hay, straw, fodder or bear-skins, whichever is to be had with man, wife and children like a parcel of dogs 
or cats, and happy is he that gets the berth nearest the fire. Ther's nothing would make it tolerable but a 
good reward. 

A doubloon is my constant gain every day that the weather will permit my going out, and sometimes six 
pistoles. The coolness of the weather will not allow me making a long stay as the lodging is rather too 
cold for the time of the year. I have never had my cloths off, but lay and sleep in them like a negro, 
except the few nights I have layn in Frederick Town." 

Geo. Washington. 




PREPARING A DINNER. 



George Wrn. Fairfax on his return from this expedition was elected a member 
of the House of Burjie.'^ses from Fairfax county, when his commission as surveyor 
in chief was given to Washington who continued in the employ of Lord Fairfax for 
twoyears more, not however continuously, in the Shenandoah valley, but also over 
the territory now included within the lintits of the counties of LoutUnni and Fairfax. 
Of his work with compass and chain during this time, 1«3 no doubt kept a diary 
as he had done in the first year, though no part of it has been preserved. Having 
fulfilled his mission as surveyor he returned to the peace and quiet of the Mount 
Vernon home. 

Soon after this he accompanied his brother Lawrence now fast declining in health 
in his voyage to the ishmd of Barbndoes. This was in the winter of 1751-2. In 
the autumn of 1753 wild rumors were coming over the mountains of the encroach- 
ment of the Fi-ench colonists upon the Virginia frontier which then extended to the 
wate)\s of the Ohio, and governor Dinwiddle looking about for a suitable person to 
send on a mission of inquiry into tiie circumsta,nces and to remonstrate with the 
aggressors, selected for tiiat par|)ose our young hero not yet twenty-one years of age. 

Flow worthily he acquitted himself in tins emergency and how heroically lie bore 
his part in the war of 1755 as Colonel and aide of General l^raddock, and also in 
after years, how he became the trusted and capable leader of the contineiUtil armies 
in resistance to the oppressive rule of Great Briiian tmd was fintdly chosen to be 
the first President of the United States of America, are stories which liave been told 
with delight in every household and by every fireside of the civilized world. 



THE STORY OF THE YOUNG SURVEYORS. 



15 



How different the after career of George William his whilom friend and com- 
panion. He had no military aspirations but was honored by many civic positions 
of trust in his province, and in all of them he fully sustained the integrity and 
nobility of his early manhood. Many times he was elected to the house of Burgesses 
and for some years he was one of his majesty's Council at Williamsburg. On the 
death of his father in 1757 he succeeded him to his estate and became the proprietor 
of the Belvior home. He had married a daughter of Col Wilson Carey of Hampton. 

Like his friend Washington he had deplored the oppressions of the mother coun- 
try against the Colonists but unlike him he did not consider them sufficient cause 
for rebellion and resistance by force of arms. 




ON THE HOME STRETCH. 



In 1772 he was called to England by private business, and on his voyage out 
passed the ships which brought the obnoxious cargoes of tea to Boston and other 
provincial harbors. He never returned to Virginia but died in Bath in 1787 aged 
63 years. He lived to know of the surrender of Lord Cornwallis to his friend 
Washington. Llis wife survived him until 1811 dying then at the age of 81. Over 
the dust of George Wm. Fairfox in an obscure English Churchyard is a plain moss 
covered stone which rarely a wayfarer ever comes to look u{)on. The last resting 
place of George Washington ever guarded and preserved in its beauty and sacred- 
ness by pious care is a shrine to which come multitudes of reverential pilgrims from 
every nation and clime, and a grateful people remembering his virtues and the 
works he did for his country and all humanity have builded for him the grandest 
monument which has ever pointed to the skies. The life stories of the two person- 
ages however, are inseparable, blending as they do in the main with beautiful har- 
mony and accord. 



<p. 



16 THE STORY OF THE YOUNG SURVEYORS. 

The bond of frienrlphip and filial afifection formed and strengthened in the early 
years of these two noble men was never broken. Divergent as were their views of 
the Revolutionary contest the individual associations of former years held sway 
through all the days of their lives; and death only closed their correspondence. 

Immediately after the battle of Lexington in 1775,Washington wrote to his friend, 
then in England, ''Unhappy it is to reflect that a brother's sword has been sheathed 
in a brother's breast, and tliat the once happy and peaceful plains of America are 
to be either drenched with blood or inhabited by slaves. Sad alternative ! But 
can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice ?" 

After the battle of Bunker's Hill, July 25, 1775, the General wrote to his friend 
again — 

My Dear Friend : "You must no flouhi have heard of the engagement on Bunker's Hill but as I am 
persuaded you will have a very erroneous account tninsmitced ot the los^ sustained by the provincials, I do 
assure you on my word that our 1. p<; as appears by the returns made to me amounts to no more than one 
hundred and thirty-nine killed, t'lirty-six missing and seventy-eight wounded. 

I am very truly your fiiend." 

G, Washington. 

Doubtless it was by letters like these despatched after every battle that Mr. Fairfax 
was continually kept correctly advised of the progress of the great struggle by the 
commander-in-chief or the Colonial armies. To a mutual fjiend in England on 
hearing of the death of Geo. William, Washington immediately wrote: "Our friend- 
ship was long, deep and uninterrupted and his loss will be lamented by all who 
knew him." 

It was during one of the candidacies of Mr. Fairfax for a seat in the House of 
Burgesses, that of 1754, that occurred on his account the acrimonious dispute 
betvveen Mr. Payne, the friend of Col. Elzey, his opponent, and his own friend Col. 
Washington in the market place of Alexandria. 

Much as we may be inclined to censure the political sentiments of George Wm. 
Fairfax it is only fair for us to presume that if he had remained in Virginia he 
might finally have affiliated perfectly with his old neighbors and friends and readily 
fallen in with the tide of opposition to the mother government and shown as much 
patriotism as did his eminent friend ; and remembering his untiring devotion to 
the American prisoners of war in England during the contest, his early associations 
and colonial services and his great integrity of character, let us still in our loving 
charity and magnanimity think of him only as the bosom friend, the trusted 
adviso"^f, the elder brother and companion of the peerless Washington, surveying 
and mapping the wilderness lands of the Shenandoah and nobly filling his mission 
as pioneer and doing his part in the building up of a great commonwealth. His in- 
fluences for good as well as those of his father, which were exerted for the right 
moulding of the character of Washington have never been properly estimated, 
thotigh lie himself fully appreciated and valued them, as appears from his private 
letters, and the old hoiiiesteiul ofBelvoir will always possess a peculiar interest as 
the place where the noted personages we have described passed so much of their 
time in pleasant social companionship together. 

While Washington was roughing it through the Virginia forests, tracing out and 
mapping the lands of the future homesteads of civilization, cutting his way through 
dense thicki^ts, cl imbering over rocks and wading streams in true hack-woods-man 
style, sleeping often on boughs of {)ine, broiling his steak over the coals ofcamj) fires 
with a wooden fcu'k cut from a sappling for a spit, perhaps no expectations of any- 
thin^i' in the future'beyond the plain routine ofa planter's life had come to the 
young adventurer but he was in the hands of destiny and unwittingly he was going 
chrough the prelude to one of the greatest modern historical dramas which was 
soon to unfold in tlic Colonies and in which he was to be the most conspicuous actor. 






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